OPINION — The scientific, medical, public health and morbidity/mortality reporting as well as the media writ large, are all documenting the profound negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the physical and economic wellbeing of the global population.
We measure this in lives lost, the outsize impact of the virus on service industry workers and minority communities, and the worrying emerging chronic sequelae of the virus for some who have recovered are all documented by reliable sources like the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Estimates of the economic disruption attributable to the pandemic can be found in reports by the US Federal Reserve, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The Brookings Institution.
Less investigated and reported on, are the so-called ‘soft costs’ of the pandemic: Mental Health issues, and they have the potential to affect us just as much as the virus itself.
Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and behavior, isolation, crippling stress, an increase in the use of alcohol and drugs, the rising possibility of emotional dyscontrol, perhaps noted in the volume of abuse and neglect referrals that have been made to various family/child welfare agencies, and local police departments are the places where we can more accurately track these trends. The loss of employment (or the fear of it), social isolation, limited options for recreation, disruption of elementary, secondary and university education, and the adverse impact on already scarce childcare resources all may also have a widespread negative and costly impact.
Plainly put, people in most age groups may feel overwhelmed, hopeless and see no way forward toward a modicum of pre-pandemic life. What we require is solid, reliable data collection to find out what is going on. There is the potential for significant mental health related soft costs in the near and intermediate terms.
Any hope of a sustained economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic primarily rests of course, on dealing with the virus and developing an effective vaccine. But it’s also essential to assess the effects of the crisis on the general wellbeing of people. How is all of this impacting each and every one of us?
Depending on the results of the data collected, we can determine how to best intervene, and we can collectively find ways to mitigate the soft costs of COVID-19 that seem to be impacting so many of us.
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